How to Sell Art is an Art

[spawn]

Many struggle with this issue of selling. Many also struggle with the muse, running out of creative ideas at times. I deal with these two issues as one and in a different sort of way. If we find the true nature of demographic, it is way too diverse for our muse to ever abandon us. As for selling, we are cunning enough to create, are we not? We merely make marketing our canvas and we are certain to sell as well as we create.

The nature of the SPAWN series is

[smb]

Selling can be fun... If you ever actually manage to sell anything!

[spawn]

Selling can be fun... If you ever actually manage to sell anything!

Maybe I can help with that as things progress. It is an area I don't have trouble with. When I blossom in the spring I do photo shoots that more or less demonstrate a concept that never fails. I will try to post some of this years coming out here.

Mind you, there are some important subset details that are very important ~ especially with the economy the way it is. I address those as well. For example, a painting is dead weight, market wise, right now. But there are many ways that a painting can be processed ~ especially in the digital age. Maybe I can

[smb]

'Sounds interesting! So what is cabochon?

[spawn]

'Sounds interesting! So what is cabochon?

A cabochon is a very simple way of finishing a stone or piece of glass. All that is needed to do it from raw material is an inexpensive diamond band saw and a wet belt sander. I also do Lucite, a high grade of acrylic, into cabochon. That material can be done intirely by hand. It is basically just flat on the back (where the image will be applied) and rounded on the show side. They are most often oval or egg shaped. One can buy them ready made, but even in stone the setup and skill in making them is very doable. It is rather relaxing at that. There are tricks to doing this well of course. I will gladly get into the whole thing in detail ~ but later. I am in the process of doing an upgrade on SPAWN ARSENAL and will be doing some online courses this summer when that is complete. I will gladly link that here. I don

[spawn]

There is another thing about paintings that makes it difficult for some to sell. This is a delicate subject. I tend to step on artistic toes when I bring this up. Many artists tend to think in terms of emulating dead styles and dead technology, forgetting how conscious those like Da Vinci and Dali were aware of technology and those tricks it can lend the artist to trick the eye. That is what we do. We trick the eye. We are illusionists tricking the viewer into a sense of perspective, luminance, and life.

As an example, I pioneered a method before computers made it so easy to animate a painting that was executed on multiple layers of Lucite. The layers were not only painted, but they were engraved, etched, and abraded to refract light to predefined ends as one changed position relative to the image and the ambient light. As one moves about the room what was static becomes dynamic.

We need to start painting beyond the canvas. We need to start thinking beyond painting when we paint. It was Dali who infuriated his master by lifting the paper to capture a beard as part of a sketching assignment. We all know who Dali is, because such a trickster. No one really knows who that teacher is, because too uptight to play our game.

There is so much available to us now. Not to use all available to us is the leading cause of artist failure.